Rumor: TMSC Starts Mass Producing Apple A12 Chip

Apple will most likely show their much-anticipated new line-up of iPhones in September, and a new iPhone has to be accompanied by a new system-on-a-chip. The Apple A12 is currently in development for the next generation of iPhones, and TMSC is reportedly mass producing the A12 processor according to reliable sources from Bloomberg.

It will be very likely that the Apple A12 chips will be manufactured via the more efficient 7nm production process. TMSC has already confirmed that mass production of 7nm already started in April of this year, and it’s practically a given that this includes Apple’s A12 chip.

The current and most recent system-on-a-chip that Apple uses is the A11 Bionix, which is manufactured using a 10nm finFET process. The graphically stronger A11X chip that is found on iPad Pro tablets is also produced at 10nm, while the A10 found in the iPhone 7 was produced at 14 or 16 nm processes, depending on which factory the chips were made.

Other chip factories have also started mass producing 7nm chips, including Samsung. In the second half of 2018, the company expects to mass produce their first 7 nm Low Power Plus Exynos chips, and Qualcomm’s next processor will most likely use a 7 nm production process as well.